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Self Contained Power Source?
McOSEN writes "Your Server Cabinet could have a 100% self sustained power source. It's called Parallel Path Technology and it's being coined as a revolution in the magnetic motor industry. From Segways to Vacuum cleaners to Server Cabinets. The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics."
From TFA:
1. It's a motor, not a generator. It sounds like it could be a neat motor, but it's still not a generator.
2. "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier."
That's right folks! It's perpetual motion machine!
So, this is about a motor that makes claims that are pretty universally accepted to be impossible. The poster, of course, is affiliated with the site hosting the page, so he really should have read the article the same way I did. Even if he didn't, maybe ScuttleMonkey should have.
I would be more annoyed, but this fits ScuttleMonkey's past science articles. Could someone send him a few pop-sci introduction texts, so we can stop having the Electric Universe, perpetual motion, and other fringe theories on the frontpage as science?
Why is it that every new PMM for the last two decades has involved permanent magnets? Is there some kind of mad-scientist cabal that decrees these things?
Wikipedia's entry on Perpetual Motion Machines has a good explanation of the obsession with permanent magnets:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion
Take a look at the "techniques" section. The core mistake in these theories is that work done by permanent magnets doesn't weaken the magnet.
Sailing over the event horizon
Like many here, I read the article and got the idea that they were talking about a perpetual motion machine (could be the "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier." at the beginning of the article that gave everyone that impression...), but the only place that I can find such a claim is from the author of the article...From the way it's written, it just doesn't appear that he knows what he is talking about.
I glanced through the patent at USPTO and it appears to me that what this is is a more efficient electric motor, not something that outputs more energy than is put into it.
-R
I really wish these kooks could separate the perpetual motion crap from reality here. They are not "over-unity", perpetual motion, or what have you. The do in fact obey all laws of thermodynamics. These motors are real and can deliver as much as 98% efficiency. We've seen them, they work. I was at the presentation recently by Boeing Phanton Works that featured these things. ..Chuck..
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.
/. readers: You have one C++ programmer, and you need more work done. Just hire one more programmer, and to your surprise, you get 4 times as much done.
There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here!
Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.
There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here.!
I was curious as to what they based their claim on?
First, go to http://www.flynnresearch.net/ to se some details on this.
The answer is:
Just doctor up formulaes: Force is proportional to magnetic flux. Se http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/ Look up 'amperes law', 'magnetic force' and 'Lorentz force'. As you can see they are all _linear_. I.e. F=B*k. (Force = Field times some constant. Flynn makes the relationship quadratic: F=B^2*A/2u.
To translate for
"Fix it"
As I understand it, the claim of above unity energy utilization in the articel summary is (of course) false and not being made for this motor.
What they are saying is above unity torque production. And here unity simply means the ratio with respect to a particular arbiratrily chosen standard. It's not a magic number. Just a way to avoid using units in the discussion.
Now what appears to be happeing is that if the rotor were stopped and one measured the torque on the rotor (or linear actuator) then you would find that this force was four times as high as a motor without the parallel path technology, running at the same current and the same number of windings.
Now we can see that this is sort of misleading. If we kept the current constant and the windings constant then the force or toruqe is higher in a non-moving rotor or actuator. But in a non-moving system one can, for the same current always increase the number of windings to increase the force. The ultimate limit comes from several practical realities. 1) increasing the windings increases both the impedance and residual reactance of the motor making it lossy and limiting it's frequency response. 2) The upper limit is reached when the magnetic flux is no longer contained by the ferrite. Both motors probably have a problem with #2 but the parallel path motor has fewer windings for the same level of force as a conventional motor.
Okay but that is still begging the question since were talking about non moving motor. adding in a permenant magent to boost the force is a lot like adding a spring to boos the force. You pay for it by the energy it took to load the spring.
Once this motor starts moving then one has to do a dynamic anayis to the flux collapsing as the rotor or actualtor moves is drawn into the field. What does this do the current in the motor? What does this do to it's complex impedance? I don't actually know the answers to those questions. The static analysis is simply bogus for concluding that. But if one were to maintain the "spring" analogy then it seems like one could not possibly be getting any net gain.
what this device does seem to be doing however is to make an assymetric pull on the acutator. that is it pulls on one arm of the motor with 4 times the torque and the other arm with no torque at all. That might possibly lead so some sort of alteration in the lead-lag curve of of the phase response of the motor at different speeds. If so it might somehow make a motor with a given amount of windings and ferrite optimally usitize it's material content better.
So if there is any gain at all here I suspect it lies with this latter effect. But I cant' do the analysis to be sure.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The energy stored in a permanent magnet (from rotated domains held from returning to their equilibrium condition) is called magnetic energy density, and is given in SI units of KJ/m^3. A more common unit used to be the Mega Gauss-Oersted (MGOe). T [1 MGOe = 8 kJ/m^3]. For most nifty permanent magnets, the KJ/m^3 value will be in the 20's to 30's. Now consider the volume of magnets that would fit in a motor you could hold in your hand, and thence calculate the energy density. Then calculate the effect of releasing ALL this energy in one minute, say of a 100mm x 10mm x 10mm magnet, releasing its 0.3 J in 60 seconds, for a whopping 0.005 Watts of power, leaving an unmagnetized lump of metal. Impressed?